Saturday, December 08, 2012

They say that peering lightyears on lightyears out into space is like looking back in time.  Look far enough, and you can catch the very first moments of the universe.  SharePoint is also a universe of sorts.  It's certainly vast and complex enough, and random enough, too.  Its history is written in a maze of ever more obscure backward compatibility features, and the daring may peer into the gaping darkness.  Perhaps even reach in... and grope nifty things like filtering list views with URL parameters.

This technique isn't used much in SP 2010, but still works for backward compatibility.  You can sort and filter list views by tacking on some URL query string parameters.  It also works on any page with a ListView Webpart.

This post will cover:

• Basic URL filters
• Filtering multiple columns
• Multiple filter values on a single column
• Wildcard filters
• Filtering on lookup columns

Basic Filter

For instance, the query string below filters the Orders list view to show only items where Product is equal to Jetpack:

You must refer to columns by their internal name, which may be different from the display name.  Fields with spaces in their display name will certainly have different internal names.  For instance, the internal name for Order Number would likely be Order_x0020_Number.

Filtering Multiple Columns

Filters on additional columns can be appended with

&FilterField2=_____&FilterValue2=_____

And so on.

Multi-value Filters

To apply multiple filter values to a single column, the syntax is a little different:

&FilterName=______&FilterMultiValue=____;____;_____

Separate each filter value with a semi-colon ( ; ).  For instance, show only orders whose Product is Jetpack OR Prismatic Core:

Wildcard Filters

FilterMultiValue also supports partial matches.  Use the asterisk ( * ) symbol to indicate a wild card. For instance,

&FilterName=Product&FilterMultiValue=*jet*

shows all orders whose Product contains the string "jet":

Lookup Column Filters

In the examples above, Product is acutally a lookup field, and I've been filtering using the lookup value.  If the Product names are very long, or we just don't know the names, we'll have to filter by the lookup ID.  That is requires a little tinkering with the list.

First we have to bring the lookup ID over as a projected field.  Go to List Settings and edit the lookup column (Product in this example).  Under Additional Column Settings, make sure the ID field is being brought over.

This adds a field to the list called Product:ID, which we can now use to filter the list views.  Because the display name contains a colon ( : ), the internal name will be different.  In most cases, it will be Product_x003a_ID.

The following filter shows all items whose Product's ID is 4: